But that's the problem with love - it acts on you, works through you, resists your attempts to control.

Raven has lost deeply, again and again, and she, too, has buried herself. There are pieces of her scattered all over. Her heart is nestled next to a small set of bones buried beside a frozen river, which will emerge with the spring thaw, a skeleton ship rising out of the water”.

No one had ever told her this basic fact: not everyone got to be loved.

This is what happens when you try to help people. You get screwed.

And even if she isn’t—even if by some miracle, she survived the escape and has been squeezing out a living in the Wilds—she would never join forces with the resisters. She would never be violent or vengeful. Not Lena, who used to practically faint when she pricked a finger, who couldn’t even lie to a teacher about being late. She wouldn’t have the stomach for it.

It's funny, isn't it? When you are young you just want to be old, and then later you wish you could go back to being a kid.

Amor deliria nervosa. The deadliest of all deadly things.